12 Years a Slave Could Win Best Picture, but About the Box Office…

12 Years a Slave will leave the box-office challenge of bringing down Gravity to the new Carrie remake. The Brad Pitt-produced drama, starring Chiwetel Ejiofor and Michael Fassbender, and featuring Pitt in a supporting role, has its own fight to fight.

Based on the memoir of a free black man of the mid-1800s sold into captivity, 12 Years a Slave emerged from September's Toronto Film Festival as the leading Best Picture favorite of Oscar oddsmakers. Opening in theaters Friday, the film has been met with near-universal critical raves that praise its power—and sometimes warn of a "harrowing," "horror-movie" experience.

Is that a combination that's going to be good for awards, but bad for business?

Just this past year, Kathryn Bigalow's Zero Dark Thirty, itself a tough sell due in part to its torture scenes, made fully 90 percent of its domestic box office after it secured a Best Picture nomination, per BoxOfficeMojo.com stats.

Still, the path to success for the supposedly difficult movie is not easy. Last weekend, the Los Angeles Timesreported, 12 Years a Slave played to a roughly half-filled (or half-empty) auditorium of Academy members.

"Every story written about this movie begins with the word 'brutal.' And I suspect that description might initially keep some people away. Initially," an Academy member told the Times. "But this is a movie people need to see, and I suspect most members eventually will."

And so long as the awards-season buzz keeps buzzing, then art-house director Steve McQueen (Hunger, Shame) will have the most widely seen movie of his career.

"12 Years a Slave will be helped immensely by the fact that many are crowning it as the film to beat when it comes to the Best Picture Oscar," Contrino said.

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